This interview originally aired on In the Moment on SDPB Radio.
Author Lauren J.A. Bear scrolled through Wikipedia to answer a question she thought of in a sleep-deprived state: Who were Medusa’s sisters?
That question became the basis for her debut novel “Medusa’s Sisters.” The book explores themes of vengeance, forgiveness and violence through the mythology surrounding an unbalanced trio of sisters.
Each sister has a story as unique as the snakes on her head.
Bear joins In the Moment to discuss the legend of the gorgons and introduce listeners to Medusa's family.
The following transcript was auto-generated and lightly edited for clarity:
Lori Walsh:
Well, perhaps, no other character from ancient Greek stories has been more mesmerizing than Medusa. She is depicted as beautiful or as grotesque. She's represented as evil, yet her severed head is wielded to fight off evil.
A new novel explores the mythology of Medusa in fresh and sometimes startling ways, "Medusa's Sisters" is deeply researched and vividly imagined.
It asks complicated questions about choice, mortality, vengeance and forgiveness, and it adds to a canon of Greek mythology from much needed fresh perspectives.
You may never look at your sister the same way again, or the stars for that matter. Lauren J.A. Bear is the author of "Medusa's Sisters." She's also a teaching fellow for the Holocaust Center for Humanity, and she is with us on the phone now.
Lauren, welcome. Thanks for being here.
Lauren J.A. Bear:
As a public radio super fan, I am thrilled to be here. Thank you for having me.
Lori Walsh:
Well, I spent the entire day with this book and could not put it down, so I am a super fan of yours now as well, so let's have some fun.
Lauren J.A. Bear:
Thank you so much. That's incredible to hear.
Lori Walsh:
First of all, it's a novel, it's fiction, and it's so incredibly researched because you went back to all this source material. Tell us a little bit about that and why that mattered to you versus just letting your imagination run wild.
Lauren J.A. Bear:
I did, and it was like putting a puzzle together, but all the pieces came from different sets so nothing really fit in the way I wanted to, which was great because I got to use a lot of my imagination and I got to think of plausible adventures that these Gorgon girls could have gone on within the timelines of the mythological chronology.
What some people don't know is Perseus is one of the earliest Greek heroes. He is an ancestor of Hercules. So where the Gorgon story occurs is very much at the beginning of the Greek stories. It's long before there's a Parthenon in Athens before the golden age, so that was interesting to explore.
Lori Walsh:
You begin with the very beginning of these sisters and when they're born. I don't think it's a spoiler alert to say that they have lovely hair. They're not filled with snake heads, so this is part of the journey. Tell me a little bit about their birth and their coming into the world and some of those themes that you wanted to explore there.
Lauren J.A. Bear:
Exactly. The story came to me, I was a middle school Humanities teacher, and I'm not sure it's probably similar in South Dakota, but in Washington state where I was teaching, sixth grade curriculum covers ancient world civilizations, so I always kind of have these stories in the back of my head, and I was on maternity leave with my daughter. She's my middle child, and you moms out there, or parents just in general know what it's like at three o'clock in the morning when you've been up with your baby and you're so sleep-deprived, and sometimes the wildest questions come into your head.
And obviously this must have been some kind of remnant from when I had left teaching to be home with my daughter, but I thought Medusa was a Gorgon, but who are the other Gorgons? I've studied this material for years. I have no idea who they are.
So I Googled them over my little baby's head on my phone and I read a Wikipedia article... I mean, how professional do I sound that I started with Wikipedia ... and there's this quote from a 19th century classical scholar who says that the other Gorgons don't matter. They're mere appendages, only Medusa matters, and I took it like a gut punch.
I'm holding my baby girl. I am a woman. It was really hard to hear, and I became obsessed with trying to find out more about them, how they became Gorgons with Medusa, what their life was like, especially when I figured out that they were immortal and Medusa was mortal, and what the dynamics must have been like for a trio that's so unbalanced in that sense.
I became obsessed with them.
Lori Walsh:
Wow. Here's one of the comparisons I've been making, and tell me if I'm all wet here ... because I've been saying, "Okay, if you went to see the Barbie movie, you need to read Medusa's Sisters," because here's why: There's a complexity and even an impossibility of the female experience. You're looking at an iconic character and there are deep thoughts about who gets to tell your story. Am I wrong? I mean all that's in there, right?
Lauren J.A. Bear:
No, you nailed it. I completely agree with that, and I think agency and voice is so important, especially in retellings.
And women in antiquity are especially silenced because already their lives were really constricted and controlled by the men in charge, and then the records of those lives were also controlled by men, so they really disappear into really flat stereotypes.
I think that's why there's such a hunger for these retellings or these counter narratives because real women are super complicated. We're Existential Barbie, and we are not just the faithful wife or the seductress, or the raging sorcerers. It's not authentic, and we want complicated female characters, real ones.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. Tell me a little bit about, as you explored the older sister and the middle sister. I'm not sure if I'm going to pronounce their names, so I'll let you do that, but what did they reveal to you about their characters, but maybe even more importantly, how they saw Medusa?
We don't get inside Medusa's head from the first person perspective, but we see her sisters seeing her in a way that reveals so much about her character. What was interesting to you about what they were revealed to you as you were writing them?
Lauren J.A. Bear:
Totally, and they see her differently. They have different relationships with her, so you kind of have to piece Medusa apart from her sister's perspectives.
One of the first decisions I made when I started to write the book was a character decision, and it was purely physical. I knew that Stheno and Euryale, that's how you say their names, they're really tricky. I didn't write those names. Those actually do come from the mythological records.
But I knew they had to look different than the iconic image of Medusa we all have, which is this beautiful but raging face with all the green snakes. We all know that image. They had to look different, and there's such a variety of snakes. I ended up researching snakes for a while, and once I gave them different colored snakes, different types of snakes, a different look, their personalities emerged from there.
And not to give spoilers, but I think the snakes actually symbolize their own interiority as the book progresses.
Lori Walsh:
Forgiveness is one of the themes you have said, and I think it's worth asking you, forgiveness among monsters? We look at the Gorgons as monstrous and yet forgiveness, vengeance, all this is held up in a really complex way. Tell me about that.
Lauren J.A. Bear:
It is complicated, and I think they sin against each other in their sisterhood. And just from my observations of family, sometimes we give forgiveness whether or not it's explicitly asked for, and that's a part of loving someone and also maybe loving yourself.
So I definitely played with that a lot, because of the two sisters, Stheno is more of the stereotype of the older sister. She's very protective of the other two, especially Medusa, and then there's Euryale who's a little more prickly, a little more complicated, so they interpret vengeance and forgiveness very differently as well.
One thing I think is so fascinating about Medusa is we associate her with rage, and violence and death, but I can't find any evidence of Medusa killing anybody in the mythological record. I found none. The only time Medusa is used to, and violent is when she's disembodied by a man who uses her head as a weapon, so she has no control over that whatsoever. So I wanted to create a Medusa that was nothing like what people might be expecting.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. Go back and we'll tweet that out. There's no record of her committing violent acts on her own, but only when her disembodied head is used to do it and she has no control. That's mind-blowing right there. Tell me about-
Lauren J.A. Bear:
Isn't that wild though?
Lori Walsh:
... yeah, I'm getting goosebumps. Tell me a little bit about the poet, the musician who is a female voice, but cannot be the voice of history, so she has to have her husband or her partner go into the world and deliver her music. That was a beautiful line where she talked about how much music meant to her and how she was compelled to create it. Tell me a little bit about where that thought came-
Lauren J.A. Bear:
Thank you.
Lori Walsh:
... for you.
Lauren J.A. Bear:
Yeah. I knew that for Stheno, for the main character, there was going to be this separation between what she thinks she wants and what she actually needs. And what Stheno thinks she wants is to protect Medusa, but what Stheno really needs is a voice and individuality, and it's the gap between those two that I think make her really interesting in her own journey.
And when they go to Athens, both of the sisters seek out other women for help in being a type of human woman.
Euryale goes to a brothel and meets this mistress, but Stheno really bonds with these musicians they're staying with. I was imagining just how it would've felt to be such a talent, to be a woman with a song, with a story, with a skillset, but not being able to share it because of the rules of society and just how frustrating that might've been.
And I also wanted to include some positive male characters too because this was never... I didn't want this to be a total male bashing book. Erastus, who's Ligeia's husband is that guy. He is a very supportive, loving partner who does his best in the way he can to support his artist wife.
Lori Walsh:
I was thinking as I prepared for this about the great Ursula Le Guin and the fantasy that she put into the world that has... I haven't read her catalog deeply, but the things I've read have had deep impact, and she means something to you too. Tell me about why it's important to put a novel into our lives right now. There's so much real stuff happening, and the role of fantasy in helping us see ourselves more realistically.
Lauren J.A. Bear:
I love that you brought up Ursula Le Guin. She is just my all-time favorite. Honestly, I get teary even thinking about her because I love her so much.
And I think that she, more than anyone, has articulated for the power of genre fiction and fantasy, and how fantasy is the oldest form of literature. Yet for so long, it was consigned to, she calls it nursery literature like, "Oh, that's for kids, Make Believe stories are for kids," and she talks about what a disservice that is because there's something about fantasy that allows us to explore real world situations with such greater creativity and with such greater limits, or expanded limits that I think it brings things to life.
The future has an ancient heart, and we're bringing these old stories back in a new way that feels so real, so connected and is such a communion with the people who've come before us.
Lori Walsh:
Lauren, you are remarkable. "Medusa's Sisters" is the book, and I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much for being here. Talk to you again, I hope.
Lauren J.A. Bear:
I hope so too. I'll come back anytime. Thank you. Thank you, South Dakota.
